Being with Grief: Jewish Wisdom for Supporting Mourners

 

 

This intimate learning journey draws on Jewish wisdom and contemporary insights to explore how we can better support those experiencing the loss of loved ones. We’ll examine how grief tests the limits of language, explore models for understanding loss, and study Jewish practices that create meaningful containers for grief. Discover pathways to deeper connection—whether supporting mourners, processing personal losses, or seeking wisdom for life’s challenging transitions through text study, reflection, and experiential exercises.

 

Chloe Zelkha is the incoming rabbi at Congregation Eitz Chayim in Cambridge, MA. Drawn to grief work after the sudden loss of her father in 2017, Chloe trained as a chaplain in a residency at UCSF Mission Bay Hospital, offering spiritual care to patients and their families. Supported by a fellowship with Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation, Chloe has run annual residential grief retreats for young people who have lost parents, siblings, partners, and dear friends for many years. She was the co-founder of the Covid Grief Network (now part of Reimagine), a mutual aid network that offered free support to those grieving family to COVID-19. Chloe is also the author of Being with Grief, a creative workbook for loss, and maintains a private practice for those facing terminal illness as a death doula. She holds a B.A. in Religion from Carleton College and an M.A. in Education from Harvard University, and completes her rabbinic studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College as a Wexner Graduate Fellow this May.